Why Postfix is called Postfix and IBM secure mailer

#1

Post by gurrone » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 3:13 PM UTC

Why Postfix is called Postfix and IBM secure mailer
marc.info

Re: Why Postfix is called Postfix and IBM secure mailer

#2

Post by Spooky23 » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 3:33 PM UTC

This was a thing at IBM at that time. I remember eyerolling at a new employer where we per paying a few thousand dollars per server from "IBM-SSH".

IBM-SSH consistent of some IBM guy replacing every instance of "OpenSSH" with "IBM-SSH". One of the interns noticed with one release the find replace hit the man pages.

Re: Why Postfix is called Postfix and IBM secure mailer

#3

Post by geocrasher » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 3:40 PM UTC

A neat bit of history. Just the name Postfix has always conjured up in mind that it was fixing a problem. And anybody who's ever used Sendmail knows which problem it was fixing :D There's also qmail, but we don't discuss that in good company.

Re: Why Postfix is called Postfix and IBM secure mailer

#4

Post by _nickwhite » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 4:23 PM UTC

How many greybeards here remember the O'reilly Sendmail bat book[1]? I built an ISP off of deciphering cryptic sendmail.cf parameters from it. This is what the "fix" in Postfix aims to "fix".

(Although the Postfix config files are no walk in the park either.)

[1] https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/sendmail-4th-edition/97...

Re: Why Postfix is called Postfix and IBM secure mailer

#5

Post by locusofself » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 4:47 PM UTC

I thought it was a play on "pustefix" which is the name of a German bear that is on these bubbles:

https://www.google.com/search?q=german+bubbles+bear&rlz=1C1C...

Re: Why Postfix is called Postfix and IBM secure mailer

#6

Post by locusofself » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 4:48 PM UTC

Postfix is good software, but I do not miss managing email servers.

Re: Why Postfix is called Postfix and IBM secure mailer

#7

Post by tyingq » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 4:49 PM UTC

Interesting contrast where the "post" in Postgres is there for the other meaning of post.

Re: Why Postfix is called Postfix and IBM secure mailer

#8

Post by slillibri » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 5:21 PM UTC

_nickwhite wrote: post #4

How many greybeards here remember the O'reilly Sendmail bat book[1]? I built an ISP off of deciphering cryptic sendmail.cf parameters from it. This is what the "fix" in Postfix aims to "fix". (Although the Postfix config files are no walk in the park either.) [1] https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/sendmail-4th-edition/97...

But you don’t need to know cryptic sendmail.cf parameters, you can just use m4 macros which are totally not cryptic at all.

Re: Why Postfix is called Postfix and IBM secure mailer

#9

Post by kstrauser » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 5:33 PM UTC

slillibri wrote: post #8

_nickwhite wrote: post #4

How many greybeards here remember the O'reilly Sendmail bat book[1]? I built an ISP off of deciphering cryptic sendmail.cf parameters from it. This is what the "fix" in Postfix aims to "fix". (Although the Postfix config files are no walk in the park either.) [1] https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/sendmail-4th-edition/97...

But you don’t need to know cryptic sendmail.cf parameters, you can just use m4 macros which are totally not cryptic at all.

For the benefit of those fortunate enough to have never had to configure that beast, you can find any number of terrifying examples. Here's one: https://tldp.org/LDP/nag2/x14661.html#X-087-2-SENDMAIL.MC.UU...

From that, we see

  LOCAL_NET_CONFIG
  # This rule ensures that all local mail is delivered using the
  # smtp transport, everything else will go via the smart host.
  R$*  $* $#smtp $@ $2.$m. $: $1  $3
  dnl

Clear as day, right?

Re: Why Postfix is called Postfix and IBM secure mailer

#10

Post by smcl » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 5:49 PM UTC

> "post" was a different word for "mail",

this is clear

> and "fix" was for Sendmail

this is unclear. I don't know how you get "fix" from "Sendmail"